In the aftermath of disasters and conflicts, affected countries often experience a sense of urgency to rapidly re-start development.
Under pressure to fast track reconstruction, countries are challenged by restricted capacities and tools for efficient decision-making. New development activities in such contexts can therefore have negative environmental impacts, which undermine long-term economic growth, and create or exacerbate local vulnerabilities to disasters.
To address this challenge, UN Environment implemented a two-year project, in 2016 and 2017, to enable countries to build back more safely and sustainably after crises. Funded by the United Nations Development Account, this project built national capacities to apply Integrated Strategic Environmental Assessments (ISEA), as planning tools to facilitate national recovery and reconstruction.
What are Integrated Strategic Environmental Assessments (ISEA)?
The ISEA is a high-level, rapid assessment, which aims to ensure that new developments minimize environmental impacts, and do not increase disaster risk. They take place as part of a nationally-driven process, involving all key stakeholders, including national and local governments, civil society, private sector and communities. The assessment produces a “Development Opportunity Strategy” to guide early stages of post-crisis recovery and reconstruction and factor environmental sustainability and disaster risk reduction.
Project Results
The project strengthened national capacities in two countries – Nepal and Côte d’Ivoire – to apply the ISEA methodology through a hands-on learning process. Lessons from an earlier initiative which pilot tested the ISEA in Sri Lanka were also documented. The experience of these three national processes fed into regional learning and south-south exchanges to facilitate partnerships on ISEA in other countries in Africa and Asia.
Resource:
Integrated Strategic Environmental Assessments in Post-Crisis Countries - Guidance note for integrating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in sustainable reconstruction and development planning English l Français
